The Magus - John Fowles [194]
Before the war he spent six years in prison. On one occasion for murder--a _crime passionnel_. On two or three others for violence and larceny. He was generally believed in Crete to have been involved in at least four other murders. One was particularly savage. He was on the run when the Germans invaded. Then he performed a number of wild exploits in the Southern Peloponnesus. He seems to have belonged to no organised Resistance group, but to have roamed about killing and robbing. In at least two proven cases, not Germans, but other Greeks. We traced several men who had fought beside him. Some of them said they had been frightened of him, others evidently admired his courage, but not much else. I found an old farmer in the Mani who had sheltered him several times. And he said, _Kakourgos, ma Ellenas_. A bad man, but a Greek. I keep that as his epitaph." A silence fell between us. "Those years must have strained your philosophy. The smile." "On the contrary. That experience made me fully realise what humour is. It is a manifestation of freedom. It is because there is freedom that there is the smile. Only a totally predetermined universe could be without it. In the end it is only by becoming the victim that one escapes the ultimate joke--which is precisely to discover that by constantly slipping away one has slipped away. One exists no more, one is no longer free. That is what the great majority of our fellowmen have always to discover. And will have always to discover." He turned to the file. "But let me finish by showing you the report that Anton wrote." I saw a thin stitched sheaf of paper. A title page. _Bericht �ie von deutschen Besetzungstruppen unmenschliche Grausamkeiten_... "There is an English translation at the back." I turned to it, and read: _Report of the inhuman atrocities committed by German Occupation troops under the command of Colonel Wilhelm Dietrich Wimmel on the island of Phraxos between September 30 and October 2, 1943_. I turned a page. _On the morning of September 29, 1943, four soldiers of No. io Observation-Post, Argolis Command, situated on the cape known as Bourani on the south coast of the island of Phraxos, being off duty, were given permission to swim. At 12: 45_... Conchis spoke. "Read the last paragraph." _I swear by God and by all that is sacred to me that the above events have been exactly and truthfully described. I observed them all with my own eyes and I did not intervene. For this reason I condemn myself to death._ I looked up. "A good German," "No. Unless you think suicide is good. It is not. Despair is a disease, and as evil as Wimmel's disease." I suddenly remembered Blake--what was it, _Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires_. A text I had once often used to seduce--myself as well as others. Conchis went on. "You must make up your mind, Nicholas. Either you enlist under the _kapetan_, that murderer who knew only one word, but the only word, or you enlist under Anton. You watch and you despair. Or you despair and you watch. In the first case, you commit physical suicide; in the second, moral." "I can still feel pity for him." "You _can_. But ought you to?" I was thinking of Alison, and I knew I had no choice. I felt pity for her as I felt pity for that unknown German's face on a few feet of flickering film. And perhaps an admiration, that admiration which is really envy of those who have gone further along one's own road: they had both despaired enough to watch no more. While mine was the moral suicide. I said, "Yes. He couldn't help himself." "Then you are sick, my young friend. You live by death. Not by life." "That's a matter of opinion." "No. Of conviction. Because the event I have told you is the only European story. It is what Europe is. A Colonel Wimmel. A rebel without a name. An Anton torn between them, killing himself when it is too late. Like a child." "Perhaps I have no choice." He looked at me, but said nothing. I felt all his energy then, his fierceness, his heartlessness, his impatience with my stupidity, my melancholy, my selfishness. His